


What Can and Cannot Be Done

by LadyBrooke



Category: Metamorphoses - Ovid
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 01:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10934130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBrooke/pseuds/LadyBrooke
Summary: Minerva and Medusa, before, until, while, and after the story of Medusa as one of the gorgons.





	What Can and Cannot Be Done

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/gifts).



**Before**

Minerva stands silently in the shadows of the temple, watching Medusa work.

“You appear devoted to your work,” she says, stepping from the shadows. “They say that you are so beautiful that you will leave my service for one of the men or gods who fall at your feet.”

Medusa looks up, her hair catching the light and glistening. “I have no interest in men or gods.”

“You will remain one of my virgins, then?”

“I have no interest in men or gods, as you well know,” Medusa says. “You are the one who decides if I remain yours or cursed like they say you will.”

Minerva laughs, and the sound echoes throughout the temple. “I could never curse you, Priestess. I would have you keep this temple forever, if I could.”

“And I would keep it for that long, if I could,” Medusa says.  “But I am a Priestess, not a Goddess, and so I will remain here as long as I can.”

“I know you will,” Minerva says, and kisses her before leaving.

 

**Until**

Minevra rages as she enters her temple, and she would strike Neptune down if he had not fled to the seas at her coming.

Medusa is laid bare in the temple, her hair tangled from Neptune’s grip and she sobs as Minerva approaches.

Minerva wants to rage more, to strike down all men who do this, to throw down Neptune and Jupiter (not her father, never again her father, not now that she can see how he must have left all of the women he tormented after he violated them).

She cannot do those things, because Medusa cried out at the sudden clanging as doors opened, and now cries more as Minerva approaches and she will not cause Medusa more pain. Her anger will only make things worse, no matter how much she wants to let it destroy everything in her path that is not Medusa.

Instead she kneels before Medusa. “Do you want my clothes?”

“No, for then you would have none,” Medusa answers, and it is so much like Medusa to be concerned with that even though Minerva is a goddess that she wants to cry.

“I do not need them, and if they will make you feel better, I will give you them,” she answers.

“No,” Medusa says. “There is nothing to keep hidden anymore, anyways.”

Minerva has to take a breath to not scream in rage. “He will not return while I am here,” she finally responds.

“But you cannot be here forever,” Medusa says. “And I cannot protect myself from a god, Minerva.”

Minerva takes another breath, and notices Medusa’s hair again, twisted around like snakes in a den. “I cannot make you a goddess,” she says, and knows that if Medusa agrees to what she says next she will lose her forever, regardless. “But I can make you able to protect yourself, but it would mean that you would not be able to look anyone in the face.”

She tells her more of her plan, and when Medusa agrees and Minerva changes her, Minerva keeps her rage and tears hidden until Medusa is gone.

**While**

Minerva watches from afar as Medusa dwells in her cave, and she wonders if this was the right choice.

She tells herself that it was Medusa’s choice, that it was the only plan she had in the moment (and the only plan she has to this day, even though she continues to try to think of what she could have done differently).

But that does not help her fear that Medusa is losing herself to her isolation, or her belief that if she had tried harder she could have discovered a way to protect Medusa from those men without sending her into such.

She learns of Perseus’s success too late to stop it, when Medusa is dead by her own protection, and Perseus brings Medusa’s head to Minerva. She keeps her rage hidden again, years of practice staring Neptune and Jupiter in the face without striking them aiding her in this.

Perseus leaves, and Minerva looks at Medusa’s face and kisses it again. She can finally do that again, now that Medusa is dead and her powers slightly lessened, and she hates that she can only kiss her again after Medusa is dead.   

 

**After**

She places Medusa’s snakes on her breastplate, where they are close to her heart, the meaning of which only Minerva knows, and where they will protect her, which she thinks would have pleased Medusa, who always raged at the limits she had which Minerva did not. Having a power that Minerva does not would have made her smile, and Minerva imagines her standing there laughing sometimes when she takes off her breastplate.

She spreads the word that an image of Medusa’s face may be placed on the women’s shelters to protect them. She could not protect Medusa, but Medusa’s face will protect other women from suffering the same fate.

She laughs when she hears that even in the afterlife Medusa stalks and terrifies men who get too close to areas they should not be in. Her dear little Medusa will not step away from what she sees as her duties until she is forced to, even after death.

Minerva gives some of Medusa’s blood to a surgeon she knows is really a good man, not one of the ones who is only a good man to other men. She watches as he uses that blood to reclaim people from death, and she knows she made the right decision when she sees him use it to claim a girl left lying on the side of the road after an attack from the jaws of death.

She laughs again when she sees him give some of the other blood to the man who attacked the girl and the man dies. She appears in the corner as the man dies, and she whispers to him that he is not worthy to be brought back by Medusa’s blood, that he is the kind of man that Minerva and Medusa both would have ended.

She could not make Medusa a goddess and she cannot bring Medusa back, but she can continue to wear Medusa’s snakes and remember what made her Medusa.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, AlexSeanchai! Having read your note, I hope I haven't managed to overlook anything obvious and that you are fine with me taking a bit of inspiration from other sources of the legend. Specifically, the bit with the surgeon is inspired by Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 144 with Asklepios and the bit about her in the afterlife is inspired by the bit in the Odyssey where Odysseus is afraid that Peresphone would have sent a gorgon against him. 
> 
> I really enjoyed both this prompts and several of your others, and only wish I had enough time to have done the research to do proper justice to some of your prompts as well as treats. :) I tried to be respectful to your beliefs and do research both on how priestesses worked in ancient Rome and how things are done today so as to not do something really stupid, but if I've managed to screw something up, please correct me and I will fix that immediately.


End file.
